Media

“Shaping the Landscape” Exhibition
HKU Landscape Architecture exhibits collaborative student artworks to tell the
Environmental and site histories of the former Lei Yue Mun quarry

17 Jan 2013

The “Shaping the Landscape” Exhibition is carried out as part of an undergraduate class at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). The theme of this exhibition is to explore human’s changing relationships with nature through collaborative and site-specific art. In the process, student artists are fully immersed in the histories and context of site in order to conceive works of art that arise from this immersion. The series of artwork captures the phenomenological qualities of the site, picking up from local materiality, colour and textures, light and wind, and site histories.

The exhibits of the HKU class will be shown at the Lei Yue Mun Plus Gallery in Lei Yue Mun from January 19 to April 8, 2013, as part of a larger cultural heritage series, with an aim to raise awareness to Lei Yue Mun’s outstanding cultural landscape and its significance, as well as a general sensitiveness to the landscape surrounding us.

An opening ceremony will be held on January 19, 2013 (Saturday). A guided tour on the exhibits will be held after the ceremony.

Lei Yue Mun has been chosen as the site for this project because of its rich village history, close relationship between villagers’ livelihood in shaping the surrounding landscapes, and the tension between local village culture and urban expansion.

Lei Yue Mun Village was established as a Hakka village. Hakka people first settled here due to its proximity to water. They made a living by practising quarry mining in the nearby hillsides, sculpting the nearby landscape by extracting materials needed. Such activity created cultural landscape unique to the village and its natural environment. However, mining activity faded away, and the tranquil village lifestyle of Lei Yue Mun is now encroached by the urban expansion in the Yau Tong area. Such tension creates ground for exploration of what landscape means to culture?

Student artists took the site of the Lei Yue Mun abandoned quarry, and have created eight site-specific art pieces. They took the themes of “Fire & Wind”, “Stones”, “Cliff/Void”, “Tides”, “Body & Earth”, “Boulders”, “Shadow”, and “Ruins”, all related to natural materials or phenomena, and also have special connotation with the history and activities conducted in Lei Yue Mun. All pieces were constructed on site, and documentations were done to capture essences of the projects, which form the basis of this exhibition.

“Shaping the Landscape” Exhibition Opening Ceremony

Date: January 19, 2013 (Saturday)
Time: 3pm
Venue: Jockey Club Lei Yue Mun Plus Gallery
Address: 45 Hoi Pong Road Central, Lei Yue Mun, Kowloon

For the opening hours of the gallery and map, please visit: http://www.jclymplus.org/

(The exhibition will form part of the Jockey Club Lei Yue Mun Plus Gallery’s anniversary exhibit entitled “賽馬會鯉魚門創意藝術館週年展覽: 文化傳承與創意藝術”)

For media enquiries, please contact Ms Vincci Mak, Assistant Professor at Division of Landscape Architecture, email: wsvmak@hku.hk , tel: 3917 5654; or Ms Melanie Wan (Manager (Media), Communications and Public Affairs Office) tel: 2859 2600 email: melwkwan@hku.hk.